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The Pirate Bay To Stop Serving Torrent Files
An anonymous reader tips news that The Pirate Bay is making a move away from .torrent files in favor of 'magnet links.' On Thursday the site made magnet links the default, and TorrentFreak reports that they'll stop serving .torrent files altogether in about a month.
"The announcement is bound to lead to confusion and uncertainty among many torrent users, but in reality very little will change for the average Pirate Bay visitor. Users will still be able to download files, but these will now be started through a magnet link instead of a .torrent file. The Pirate Bay team told TorrentFreak that one of the advantages of the transition to a 'magnet site' is that it requires relatively little bandwidth to host a proxy. This is topical, since this week courts in both Finland and the Netherlands ordered local Internet providers to block the torrent site. Perhaps even better, without the torrent files everyone can soon host a full copy of The Pirate Bay on a USB thumb drive, which may come in handy in the future."
more like isp level blocking. they will just make tons of mirrors of the site everywhere. kinda like how i said with sopa etc it does not matter what law you pass or how many sites you take down 50 more take its place.
Yeah, pretty much. e.g. I own Diablo II. A few weeks ago I looked around for my CDs, but was having trouble finding them. My only options were to pay for it twice, pirate it or to give up. I picked pirate... you tell me why that's morally wrong.
Hint: because the government said so isn't a real answer
Piracy is good because we don't live in a world where people create something, and then through copyright get to make some money off of it. We DO live in a world where rights to large numbers of works are bought up by a very small number of corporations, who pay governments to be able to keep those rights forever. They collude together to fix prices, and make sure that only their entertainment can ever reach the shelves of your local bookstore or video store.
Piracy hasn't gone far enough. This system they've created is something I will fight against will all my being. They are stealing and controlling our culture. My hope is that piracy is so pervasive and easy that even currently released blockbuster movies or bestseller books make no money. Yes, there will be collateral damage in terms of artists not being able to support themselves entirely through their art, and a drop in new entertainment produced in the near future. This is an acceptable price.
Piracy is good, yes. Have you been drinking Rupert Murdoch's Famous Internet Censorship flavored Kool Aid? Piracy is good. Even Bill Gates said that piracy is good - what greater authority on the subject can there be?
http://blogs.computerworld.com/node/2803
http://articles.latimes.com/2006/apr/09/business/fi-micropiracy9
WTF is with this globalization, one world government view that pirates are a cancer, eating at the world's economy? There are probably tens of thousands of people in China who could never have been able to buy Windows, who are working in the tech world today, because pirated copies of Windows were available. Ditto with India, and God knows how many other countries. EVEN THE UNITED STATES!!! (How many American parents were unable to purchase, or see the wisdom in purchasing, Windows 95 in 1995?)
Of course, we're back to the definition and purpose of copyright law. Copyright law was never intended to ensure that an author would make a profit. It was only intended to ensure that IF THERE WERE A PROFIT to be made, then the author should get some of that profit.
Piracy is good, if for no other reason than underprivileged people acquiring educational tools. Games and music? I just don't give a rat's ass about the music syndicates, movie syndicates, and games. They can all go belly-up if they lack the imagination to find new business models.
Piracy is good. I got my first Windows NT via torrent. I got my first Linux via torrent. I got my first MacOS via torrent. I'm among the wealthiest 1% of the world's population, and I couldn't afford everything that I've ever played with on the computer. What about that other 99%?
I support piracy, whole heartedly. My counterparts in backwoods African and Asian and South American countries NEED piracy, if they are ever to join the 20th century. You know, the century that we retired a decade ago?
Hey, one of the women I work with went home on vacation a few weeks ago. She has already overstayed her stay. I asked her husband how I could email her. I learned that her hometown only got electricity about 25 years ago, and there IS NO INTERNET!!! Cell phones don't work. If I were to communicate with her, it would be via POTS, at some exorbitant cost.
Now, pull your head outta your butt, and support Pirate Bay, and the Pirate Parties. They provide a crucial service to huge segments of the world's population.
Oh - I'll note here, that I've not personally pirated anything in a long time. Today, I don't need WinNT, anything that Adobe makes, or even Sun/Oracle. With OSS, it's free anyway. I still get most of my stuff via torrent though!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br